First, What Is A Release Candiate?
A release candidate is basically a beta version of the software, that has the potential to be a final version. Everything at this stage has been designed and tested thoroughly and unless there’s a significant bug that’s found/changed, the release candidate will eventually become the next version of the software.

When it comes to Lightroom, Tom Hogarty (the Lightroom Product Manager) says this about it on his blog:
“The ‘release candidate’ label indicates that this update is well tested but would benefit from additional community testing before it is distributed automatically to all of our customers. The final release of Lightroom 4.2 may have additional corrections or camera support.”

Am I Going To Download It?
Yes, I’ll be downloading it soon. I’m teaching at Photoshop World next week in Las Vegas so I’m a little hesitant to change anything before then. Not just Lightroom, but I’m usually hesitant to changing anything on my computer right before a big conference. But who knows… I’m not very good at waiting so I may tempt fate before then

Question: Have you (or will you) upgraded to the Lightroom 4.2 release candidate yet? Any thoughts so far?

Matt is the full-time Director of Education for Kelby Media Group and a Tampa-based photographer. He's the Editor-in-Chief of Lightroom Magazine, the lead instructor on the Adobe Photoshop Lightroom LIVE Seminar Tour and author of several best-selling Photoshop books. Matt also hosts the world's top Lightroom blog, LightroomKillerTips.com, where he's built up a massive library of Lightroom videos, presets and tips. In addition to teaching Photoshop, Lightroom and photography seminars around the world, he's an instructor at Photoshop World and one of the full-time staff writers for Photoshop User Magazine.

22 Comments

I’ve download it and other than sucking CPU like I have 100 gigs of ram and loading photos slooooooower than cold molasses, it’s doing well so far. Also very slow to save exported images – 4.2 is much slower than viewing images in FastStone Image Viewer. Have a question – are there Lightroom codecs so that FastStone can view saved Lightroom tiffs? FastStone views everything including the CHDK raw format, excepting the tiffs created by Lightroom and Microsoft ICE.

I see in the documentation that there was an audio problem. I installed 4.2RC and my audio problem went away…for the first video I played, but the second video played, but without sound. It’s very frustrating. Any ideas on a fix/workaround? I saw one use start the application in Windows 7 as administrator. This worked, but only once. I’m at a loss.

Thank you Jeremy. I am surprised that LR 4.1 can’t tethered Canon 5D mk III, and even more surprised to find out that LR 4.2 RC still have the same problem. I will have class tomorrow and I have to use my Canon 7D for tethering purpose… Sad…

Downloaded it and using it. I hadn’t come across any of the 4.1 bugs that were “fixed” in this release, so cannot comment, but did have (well-documented on the Web) performance issues with 4.1 (i.e. runs like a snail). Sadly they haven’t been fixed in 4.2.

I just wish they would address the speed issues introduced with LR4. Don’t get me wrong, I love the enhancements, but LR3 runs so much quicker with many operations, especially switching between photos in Develop. My LR3 even has a much larger catalog.
I’m surprised they aren’t including Retina display support though!

I will NOT be downloading it. On the principal that I never use beta or *.0 SW at all if I can help it. Also I usually wait a week or two before using any of the major up dates when they are released. I can’t afford to loose images or lots of edits.

However unless there is a lot of shouting in the week after it is released I will be downloading the released 4.2